


Different Names for the Same Thing

by cashewdani



Category: JONAS
Genre: Childhood Friends, F/M, Parent Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-09-27
Updated: 2009-09-27
Packaged: 2018-01-15 02:36:45
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,432
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1288090
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cashewdani/pseuds/cashewdani
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>Before they were going on tour, and meeting the queen and trying to define signature looks, Stella was a girl in Joe’s class whose mother died.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Different Names for the Same Thing

Before they were going on tour, and meeting the queen and trying to define signature looks, Stella was a girl in Joe’s class whose mother died. And before that, she was a girl whose mother was sick. And Joe assumes before that she was just a girl, but to be honest he doesn’t really remember her then, before his mother started picking her up after school and making dinners for her family.

In the beginning, she’d come over occasionally. When Mrs. Malone was tired in the afternoon. If she had an appointment. And Joe’s mother would let them watch Nickelodeon and eat their snack in the living room and not yell at him about his homework. So even though she was a girl, and had too much hair and a Hello Kitty notebook, it wasn’t horrible. Plus, his mother told him to imagine how he would like someone being mean to him if she was in the hospital and after that he tried to be nicer. Let her have his red fruit snacks even though they were his favorite, because they happened to be her favorites too.

And then, Stella was there more and more, and things went back to the way they used to be when Stella hadn’t been there. Back to chores and assignments and being told to use his inside voice. But not everything was the same. Stella would help him with his math problems, and cheer him on from the sidelines during soccer practice and help him write stupid songs to the music Nick was always playing on the piano. Joe began to realize that he liked having her there. That he liked her. So even then it wasn’t horrible either. In fact, he feels bad for thinking it, but in some ways it was almost nicer, having her there. Stella laughed at his jokes and didn't make fun of his glasses and maybe he never would have known that if her mom hadn't gotten cancer. So he made her smile as much as he could and they didn't really talk about anything serious.

It did get horrible though. Eventually. When she started spending the night, and Joe could hear her crying and his mother’s gentle voice through the walls. And it was horrible then not because she was a girl, but because she was Stella and her mother was dying and by then Joe never wanted anything bad to happen to her. Some nights, she’d climb in next to him, in his bed with the Cowboys sheets on them, and he’d try to touch her back the way his mother did when he was sad. Like if he could make her feel better, her life wouldn’t fall apart.

It happened anyway. Even though he prayed and told Stella things were going to be okay and punched Bobby Fleischer in the face for saying she was weird, it happened anyway. And his mother said that even if things don't seem fair or right, they're God's will even if we can't understand why, and Joe didn't like that. At the wake, Stella didn’t want to go into the room, the one with the casket. So Joe stood with her in the lobby and held her hand and made her tell him about how his mom showed her how to hem the pants he was wearing that used to be Kevin’s. He can still remember she squeezed his fingers eleven times that day.

That was the first night in a long time that Stella didn’t come home with them, and it felt weird to not have her there. They sat around the dinner table even if no one was really eating and Joe is just so scared. Scared that something is going to happen to his own mother, or that Stella will be different now or that maybe he's never going to be able to believe in something the way he could before this happened.

He can't sleep when his father sends him to bed, and the next day his mother tells him he doesn't have to go back to school just yet, if he's not ready, but Joe goes anyway because he'd feel guilty staying home. It's not like he's the person who lost someone. Still, he can't help but look at Stella's empty desk all day.

*****

Stella's dad goes back to work, and Stella comes back to school. She's allowed to walk out of the classroom and go to guidance whenever she feels like. And every time that she does it, Joe wants to go with her. She just gets up quietly from her desk and takes the rubber duck that's the classroom pass without disrupting anything, and yet Joe always notices. It feels like she's the only thing he can really pay attention to in school. 

He asks her one afternoon when they're alphabetizing their spelling words what she does when she goes down there, and she asks him, "Can you keep a secret?"

"I can keep a secret better than anyone!" and sometimes he can.

Stella leans in close after confirming his mother is busy in the kitchen on the phone with someone. "Usually I don't even go to Ms. Meyers office. I'll go and sit in the old home ec room until I feel like coming back." She writes _reign_ after _rain_ in her notebook while Joe gapes at her. The home ec room is in the basement in the part of school that hasn't been changed over yet from when it used to be for older kids and under no circumstances are they to be down there. He doesn't even think if your mother died that it would be okay.

"Aren't you worried about getting in trouble?" He erases where he's written _there_ because _their_ was supposed to come first, and when he's brushing away the shavings, runs his hand along her arm. 

"No." Stella adds _to, too_ and _two_ down the list, all in what he knows is the right order. "I started making a dress with the material my mom bought me before." She doesn't say before what, she never does, and Joe doesn't know if that's because she doesn't want to, or because it's like everyone already knows what she's talking about. "When it's done, maybe I'll stop going."

"I don't like it when you leave," he mutters, kind of under his breath and not looking at her.

"At least I come back," and Joe doesn't know how to respond to that. 

She writes _won_ on the last line next to number 10 and Joe feels weird about it even though it'll be years before he knows what irony is.

*****

Stella wears the dress to school the day after she finishes it. And it looks homemade, but not bad. It's a little shorter in the back than it is in the front, and the arms seem too small, but at least it looks like a dress. And apparently it's been a long enough time since the funeral, that rather than just letting her wear it, Mrs. Gordon sends her down to the office for breaking dress code. She has to wear one of the leftover jumpers the nurse keeps in her office with a boy's polo underneath and Joe can tell from all the way across the room that she's furious about it when she comes back to class.

At recess he sits with her because she's afraid the too big dress is going to fall off of her if she climbs the jungle gym and tells her he thought she did a good job, even if their teachers are dumb.

The next month, he's the one getting sent out of class to change, and if anyone notices that his shirt was the same pattern as the dress she came in with, they don't say it.

*****

They get older, and they're still Stella&Joe, even when they get put in different homerooms in 6th grade, or when he's supposed to be spending more of his time working on school and music and not as much time being her dress form. But then Joe starts sort of failing science, and he has to get a tutor, and all the time after school she used to spend with him, she starts spending with his mom. They go shopping and get their nails done and by the time Joe's gotten his grades up, Stella's kind of a different girl. She curls her hair now and wears lip gloss and she hangs out a lot more with the girls from school. Going to the movies with them, and getting invited to sleepovers and apparently talking about whatever it is girls talk about. She won't tell him. Abby and Jessica and Karen used to make fun of her just a few weeks ago when she still had her headgear, but now they're suddenly her best friends or whatever.

On the days she does still come to his house, she wants to sit in the kitchen with his mother and talk to her about all the things she used to talk to Joe about. And sometimes Joe will help peel potatoes, or wash grapes, but recently it just pisses him off too much to be a third wheel in his own family.

He's gotten really good at the guitar since Stella decided she wants to be cool. So that's a bright side at least.

But then one Thursday, he just really can't take it. He forgot his math homework and cut his hand in shop class and maybe he wants to be the one to come home and tell his own mother about his day and have her make him hot chocolate and ask him how he feels. Joe rode his bike home after the detention for the missing assignment, palm stinging the entire way, and when he gets in the door, his mother's on the phone and asking him to go check on Stella because she wasn't feeling well and she hasn't seen her for a little while.

Stella's not in the living room, or his room, and when he knocks on the bathroom door and says, "It's Joe," she tearfully responds "I want your mom."

"Stella, what's wrong, come on, you can tell me," he says, leaning against the door, wondering if she's really sick or just sad about something. She sounds sniffly, not like she's dying or anything serious.

"Just get your mom, Joe. I need your mom," and Joe can't help it, he slams the door jam really hard with his hand, the pain rushing up to his elbow. Stella's supposed to be his friend, and his mom's supposed to be his mom, and it's been a really long day.

"Fine, I'll do that. Sorry I offered to help." He walks back to the kitchen, grabbing an apple and saying, "Stella's in the bathroom. She wants you." He bites into the fruit, and starts flipping through the mail on the table.

"Well, is she okay? Joseph, honestly, have some compassion, what's wrong with you?" She's drying her hands on a dishtowel and heading upstairs, and he just stays there looking at his dad's biking catalog.

Twenty minutes later, they both come down, Stella's face all puffy from crying and Mom's arm around her shoulder, and Joe says matter of factly, "You got your period, didn't you?"

"Joe!" Stella says at the same time that his mother is saying, "Joseph!"

"What, you did, didn't you?"

"That's none of your business!" Stella says, arms crossed tellingly over her midsection.

"I'm your friend, aren't I? It's my business."

"You're a boy, Joseph, it's not the same thing," his mother says, looking flustered and aggravated with him. He wishes she'd stop using his full name even more than he wanted the hot chocolate a half hour ago.

"She's practically my sister, I don't know what the big deal is," he says, all fresh and pissed off and slamming his chair into the table. "You might as well be her mother."

"My mother's dead, you asshole!" And Stella's crying again, and Joe's stuttering out an apology while his mother's screaming at him to go to his room and he feels like the worst person on the planet.

That night, before her dad picks her up, she brings a bowl of ice cream up to his room. Like she's the one that needs to be apologizing or something. "I'm so sorry, Stel. I can't believe I did that."

"I think you got your period today too," she replies, dipping her finger into the whip cream. "Apparently people who hang out a lot can end up on the same cycle."

"Don't be nice to me, I'm a dick."

She holds the dish out to him again. "But I feel bad."

"Why do you feel bad?" he asks, putting so much emphasis on the "you" that it's practically coming out of his mouth italicized.

"I haven't been a good friend recently."

"What are you talking about?" he asks her, even though he agrees.

"I haven't helped you with schoolwork, and I've been blowing you off for the girls, and I don't know, that's not nice."

"You're right, that's not nice," Joe says, finally taking the spoon from her, as she sits down next to him on the bed.

"Do you even want to know why?"

"I didn't know girls had to have reasons for these kinds of things."

"Who's not being a good friend, now?"

"Alright, why?" He takes another bite.

"Well, the girls are always asking if you're my boyfriend. If we're hooking up." She dips her finger in his ice cream again but now that she's said that it seems way too forward. "And it's weird."

It is weird. Way too weird. "Why would they think that?"

"We hang out all the time. You know everything about me. I could see it, if I was someone on the outside."

"So you stopped doing things with me?"

"I didn't want to fuel the fire." And maybe that was the case when people are around, but he can feel her lean her knee in so it's brushing against his own.

"Does this mean you want to stop being friends?" Joe doesn't want that. In fact, it's the one thing he's been laying up here in his room thinking about since he was sent here. That Stella's outgrown him and he just burned the last pieces of bridge that were connecting them by acting like a douchebag.

"No, of course not!"

"Well, then does it mean that you want to be my girlfriend?" He's smirking and he guesses that's because he's happy she's letting him stick around and not because he's being flirtatious or anything like that.

"I think you were the one saying just a few hours ago that I was like your sister."

"Yeah, but that doesn't mean you're not in love with me."

She leans her shoulder into him with a little more force than necessary. "Oh yeah Joe, I'm so in love with you."

"I knew it!" He thrusts his fist in the air like he's Nick winning anything.

"Promise me you're always going to be my brother?"

"I promise."

"Good." 

He holds a spoonful of ice cream up to her mouth. "I really am sorry."

"I know."

The next day at school she has lunch with all the girls, but waves at him from the other side of the cafeteria so it mostly feels okay.

*****

Kevin's the one who sees the ad about the Battle of the Bands contest, and Nick's the one who makes them sign up, and even though those seem like the two most important pieces of the equation that got them from playing in their basement to playing stadiums, Joe knows he was a crucial variable as well. Because Joe's the one who asked Stella to make their outfits for them.

Everyone else there is wearing t-shirts from bands that stopped making music before they were born and super trendy sneakers and the same exact haircuts as the members of _Fall Out Boy_. And Joe knows that's how they would have come dressed if Stella hadn't told them there was no way she was letting that happen. It was the first time they'd wear the converted school uniforms that would become part of their signature look and get Stella's name onto the pages of People magazine. But no one knew that then when they played a cover of "My Name is Jonas" in some middle school auditorium and Stella sat in the front row with their parents and Frankie and Joe could swear she clapped the loudest out of anyone. 

They wind up winning, and a call comes in a week later from an agent, saying that people keep asking about that Jonas band, and everything after that starts going really fast. Joe doesn't even really remember that summer if he's being honest.

It's a blur of shows, and late nights on planes where he fell asleep on Kevin, and Nick teaching him how to get that quick part of the bridge perfect every time. Little hotel soaps and people he's never met knowing all sorts of things about him. And in the middle of it all is Stella, measuring him for shirts and holding his hand before he went out on stage and just smiling so big whenever he started to doubt himself.

Joe knows it was the best summer of his life, even if that's all he was able to take away from it.

*****

But then, the fall comes and they're still touring, still doing photo shoots and meet and greets and promotions for radio stations. Stella has to go back to school, and her life, and it's only then that Joe starts wondering about how they got here and if he really wants it. He likes the music, and some of the perks, but other things are starting to suck. 

Nick has always been quiet and Joe knows that he takes things seriously, but it's hard to tell him to shut up and be a kid when it's about their careers and not some game of HORSE out in the driveway. And the fact that his little brother is making him practice for at least an hour a day tends to make him kind of pissed off. Girls have started sleeping outside their hotels, and trying to sneak into their bus, and on occasion the best part of his day is when he calls Stella before he goes to bed.

She never complains, even if it's late, or Kevin keeps screaming in the background that he can't wait to see her and would like a knitted sweater with a cupcake on it because people should know it's his favorite dessert. Talking to Stella feels normal, and maybe it's because she's telling him about cutting gym class, and shopping at the mall, and the new girl in school, Macy, who apparently is totally in love with all of them. Things that until a few months ago were part of his life too. He always tells her that he misses her and she always says he must be having more fun out there on the road than she's having at home. Joe wonders if she thinks his response isn't true because that's how he feels about hers.

The venues get bigger, and the shrieking gets louder, and Joe gets through it all knowing that at the end of the night Stella will tell him about how she still sucks at dodgeball.

*****

Coming back home after it all is a combination of every feeling Joe thinks he's ever felt. He's thrilled to sleep in his own bed. Disappointed that there's no room service when he gets up. Angry because even with trying to keep up, he's apparently almost a marking period behind. Uncomfortable because everyone at school seems to be staring at him all the time. There's all that that he can recognize, put a name to, and then there's the one thing that he can't. Whenever he's with Stella now he feels...full, is the best he can come up with. Like whatever the opposite of lonely is.

When he sees her at the airport after they land, with this stupid fluorescent sign she made, he kind of almost wants to cry. He'll deny it out loud, but that's honestly how it felt. And hugging her, after months of not hugging her, it was worth the tabloid rumors and all those YouTube videos the fans made saying they were going to slit their wrists with smashed up copies of the album if it turned out that Stella actually was his girlfriend.

Of course she's not, because in the middle of that hug, she whispered in his ear, "Welcome back, Bro." Or maybe it just sounded like she was whispering over the sound of thirty something paparazzi asking who she was.

He knows when they were gone that she was way more involved in school. That her grades were the highest they've been in years and that she organized a schoolwide fashion show to raise money for a homeless shelter and helped design the costumes for the winter musical. But now that they're back, she's always around. With him. She wants to hear about Milan and Paris and London, even though she's heard about them all before and she fits him for more shirts than he could ever feasibly wear in his life. The whole time, her fingers running over his arms and chest and neck, adept and distracting.

She even sleeps at his house again, which she hasn't done in years, because of these half assed reasons she always seems to come up with. Her dad's working late, or she's too tired after staying up to watch them on Conan or that there's no way she's letting them dress themselves the morning of a photo op. Joe teases her that she's just a weirdo who misses him too much when he's out of the room, but then he starts to realize that on the nights he sleeps in his own bed, instead of on an air mattress because she's using it, it's hard to sleep without the sound of her breathing.

At breakfast, they split omelets, and argue over who got the bigger piece. And after dinner, she puts her feet in his lap and asks him to rub them because he has no idea how much heels hurt.

*****

Joe really wanted Stella to come abroad with them this time, but she has some big biology project she was assigned to do with Macy, and maybe Macy's gotten better, but there's no way she's coming out on tour with them. So they fly into Heathrow for he thinks the sixth time in a year while she is diagramming plant cells on the other side of the world. The spring social is happening a few days after they're scheduled to get back from Europe, but Joe can't help thinking they're going to miss it. Like there will be a storm, or a last minute show added, or a request to stop by Dubai for some eleven year old's birthday party.

He feels it in his guts that something isn't going to go according to plan, and he thinks that's why he can't ask Stella if she wants to go with him. Because calling to say they're not going to make it back to California in time is just not something he thinks he can do. So instead, when he talks to her, it's about whether he thinks VanDyke will ask her to the dance. Joe knows she's just trying to get a rise out of him but it still sucks, listening to the things VanDyke gets to do with Stella while Joe struggles to understand the most basic Italian.

"He sat next to me in assembly this morning. I think tomorrow's the big day," she says and Joe can practically see her filing her nails while she talks to him.

He's flipping through the TV channels trying to find something that's in English. He doesn't even care what it is. "VanDyke's complexion doesn't compliment yours as well as you think it does."

"Don't be mean. Our complexions are completely compatible."

"They're really not."

"Ok, whatever, stop talking about this."

"You brought it up," and he knows it sounds like he's sulking. There's just nothing on.

"What time is it there?"

"I don't know." He moves the curtain in his room to see it's, "Something dark, but not really night yet, why?"

"Because you're getting whiny like it's past your bedtime."

"Bitch."

"I'm telling your mother you said that the next time I speak to her."

He scoffs. "Then I'm telling her you want VanDyke to get at least to second base with you by Saturday."

"I think she already knows that."

"Oh, gross, Stel. Offensive. Truly offensive."

She laughs the laugh for when she really thinks something's funny. The same laugh he can remember from when they were kids and he misses her so much in that moment that it actually feels like his ribcage hurts. "I wish I was home," he says what must seem like it's out of nowhere.

"You'll be home soon."

"Not soon enough."

And Joe was right, they wind up getting help up at customs in Germany because of some unlabeled cough medicine that Kevin had in his carry on. And while they were sitting on the uncomfortable airline chairs, Stella'ed texted him with a picture of her in her dress and then another one of the corsage that VanDyke bought. Her final message of the night that he got when they finally landed nearly 14 hours late was her saying she had so much to tell him. Joe's beyond exhausted, and yet that night he can't sleep.

*****

She swears she didn't hook up with VanDyke, and that her news was actually all about how Macy jumped on the DJ after he refused to play any _JONAS_ songs, and yet, Joe can't stop thinking about the two of them slow dancing, Van Dyke's hands on the small of her back. He's thought about it so much that it seems real even though it didn't happen.

It's strange to be jealous about Stella, like just jealous about her as a person, not of something she has.

Joe makes her help him with geometry more than he actually needs her to, and he gives her the Valentino skirt that he had been planning on saving for her birthday just because. He writes about seven songs that could be about her, but could also be about anyone, just in case someone's paying attention.

*****

Their last night in what will become the old house, he almost kisses her. While he's looking at the ceiling in what's been his room for his entire life for the last time, and while everything he owns is in a labeled box, he really almost does.

They're crammed in his twin bed even though they haven't been able to fit here comfortably in forever, but it's going out to the curb tomorrow, so he feels like they have to. His arm is numb under her neck and Stella's knee is pushing uncomfortably into his own, but it's still one of those quiet, perfect moments that's begging out for something big and meaningful to happen.

Stella's the one person who gets him that doesn't share his last name. Who knows who he was and who he wants to be, and that understands that even though he's nearly 17, he's still scared about living someplace new tomorrow. She would let him kiss her. Even forgive him if things changed after the fact. And the fact that she would, that she loves him like he's already a part of her, it's funny how that's the reason he can't.

She moves his hair off his face with her free hand and that's when he finally closes his eyes.

*****

They have another hit, and buy their parents a Hummer for Christmas, and Stella helps him pass his midterms.

He goes to premieres with starlets and awards shows with models because it's what he's expected to do, and Stella watches Macy's volleyball games with VanDyke because they're normal.

Joe worries sometimes that he's growing apart from her and that they're not going to have anything left in common to talk about. There's a night that he has to hang up on her while she's telling him about some fight she got in with her dad because they have an appearance to be at, and that's the first time he books the private jet to take her to London.

The weather sucks, and it's so cold that Joe can barely stand it, but they walk down by Big Ben and take pictures in the famous red telephone booths and even go on a double decker bus tour. They're the only idiots sitting on the second level, because it's January in England, but his hands are warm when she's holding them, both of them wearing gloves she knit on the flight over.

She looks lit up the whole time they're over there, and it's not the windburn on her cheeks.

As the months go on, they'll hit Barcelona and Florence and Prague, but never Paris, because Joe doesn't think he'd be able to stop himself there.

*****

There's the failed date at the basketball game, and the promise that they're not going down this path and yet there's the way she still looks at him, like there was no point in them trying to swear off something that's inevitable.

*****

The weekend of his parents' 20th anniversary, his aunt and uncle host a party at their house. And there's so many people there, but people Joe actually knows, that he grew up seeing. There's not a single industry person there, it's all family members and friends and people his parents worked with before their lives became a whirlwind. 

Joe loves that they're eating trays of stuffed shells and that Frankie did a stand up routine for everyone and mostly that no one was paying any attention so that he could steal a half a bottle of champagne.

He and Stella are sitting at the top of the stairs, tucked around a corner, and he can hear people down below laughing and talking too loudly and he just feels so warm. Stella's smiling, and resting on his arm and he wants to know what her lip gloss tastes like. What her mouth tastes like after she's had champagne and with his tongue in it. He knows her best out of anyone, and he doesn't know that. It makes him lean in a little bit more.

"Joe, I'm really happy," she says, and her eyes look a little bit like they do before she goes to sleep. "I want the party to go on forever."

"Me too," he semi-whispers as there's another burst of laughter from the living room. The champagne bubbles all feel like they're inside his head.

"Do you remember that time in second grade, on the field trip to the zoo, when I dropped my cotton candy and you gave me some of yours?"

And Joe can remember his Cowboys sheets, and the pattern of that first shirt she made and how much she loved red fruit snacks, but he doesn't remember that all. "No."

"That was the first time I knew you were a nice boy and I told my mother when I got home." 

It was before it all that she remembers him, when she was just a girl, and it's amazing to him that one of the best pieces of his life was set in motion without him being aware of it. "I wish I remembered that."

"It's okay that you don't. I do."

And he's stopped himself for so long that he thinks it would get easier, not harder, but in the dim light of this quiet hallway he can't do it any more. "Stella, I really want to kiss you. I've wanted to kiss you for so long that I don't even know when it started. And I know you're like my sister, and that's weird, and that you're my friend and this can ruin everything but I just..." and he doesn't finish because apparently she feels the same way. Her hair is soft where he touches the back of her neck, and her mouth is hot and Joe's dizzy with all of it.

Her lip gloss is cotton candy, incidentally.


End file.
